


Ribbon of Darkness

by glinda4thegood



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-27
Updated: 2006-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What, exactly, is a vampire?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ribbon of Darkness

_**BuffyFic: Ribbon of Darkness**_  
Joss Whedon's universe.  
My fantasies.  
RATING: PG-13  
Synopsis: Spike, after Africa. Exactly what is a vampire?  


 **"I don't think we can help you."**

"'scuse me?" Spike found his fingers reaching for a cigarette. He shoved his hand into his pocket instead. "Got any idea why I'm here?"

The old woman behind the ancient desk took a deep breath that whistled through her sinuses. Her milky eyes bobbed in their sockets like old turtle eggs suspended on unflavored gelatin. She hadn't bothered to open the folder containing receptionist's notes on his case. "I'm the Evaluator. Of course I know. You're making _my_ head pound, vampire. I think the question is -- do you know why you're here?

"Do you know what you are?"

***

 _Exactly what is a vampire?_

It was a question that Spike had come to fear could only be answered on an essay exam. No shortcut, single-word responses were adequate. 'Monster,' or 'demon' didn't make the grade.

Long before knowledge of his kind percolated into urban legend and popular culture, but still not that long ago in the Big Picture, there were occult teaching texts, and the rudimentary, uncoordinated beginnings of what would eventually become the Great Watcher Library. Cross-referencing vampire lore between street knowledge and arcane academia went a long way to separating truth from fiction, but how many seekers made the effort?

The demon community had its own conglomeration of myths and legends. Had a working demonologist gone a step further and thrown that information into the mix, Spike had the suspicion that long-ignored and interesting chunks would have floated to the surface.

Newly emerged vampires were universally instinctual creatures, driven by fierce thirst. But just like young human children they differed in ability to learn, measure of cleverness, degree of physical strength, and knack for survival. Out of ten human toddlers, eight can play on the steps without tumbling to injury or death. Out of ten young vampires, three will make it to the first anniversary of their death.

A passing acquaintance with Vlad Tepes and Bram Stoker's magnificent piece of press elevating the Lord of Darkness to the status of folk hero among both living and undead, had been responsible for Spike's lamentable interest in vampire fiction. Over the years he'd read a thousand stories filled with vampire villians, lovers, detectives, and occasionally heroes. He had often wished he _could_ turn into a wolf, or something that could fly -- preferably not a bat. Maybe one of the big raptors: eagle, falcon, even turkey buzzard. But shape-shifting was, contrary to those folk and urban legends, not in the common vampire's bag o'tricks.

To a lesser extent the same was true of that much publicized sense of smell.

 _'He could smell her arousal.'_

That was his favorite fictional exaggeration of vampire abilities. Urban legend getting vamps and werewolves mixed up, Spike thought. The scent of blood, ah, that was different. Perhaps it was because of what he carried in his own blood. Blood calling to blood, special receptors that alerted the demonic parasite to the presence of food and reproductive medium.

The sound a beating heart made, the piston pound of fear, desire, anticipation. Ah. His third revelation, waking into undead existence, had been a keen awareness of a world of sound he'd never noticed while breathing. Strange hunger sharp as a blade stabbing his jaw and gut had come first; second, physical power that vibrated in his bones like cold lightning, followed by the cacophony of the heaving, fog-shrouded hunting ground he'd once considered a city.

 _Ah._

He remembered following Dru like an overstimulated puppy, adoring, eager, happy to worry the throat of his first kill while she crooned encouragement. A common prostitute, reeking of dirt, gin and sex. Her blood brought warmth to the power in his bones, and silenced a protest of distaste, the echo of an echo, from a fastidious, sensitive man who had died yet not been buried.

There was no enforceable rule that men with souls had to remember their pasts, let alone learn from them. There was no guarantee that a man with a soul would be compassionate, honest, loving, worthy of trust. The universe didn't come with guarantees, warranties, certificates of authenticity, insurance, assurance, justice for any of its creatures. History documented atrocities by living humans, ostensibly souled, whose deeds reduced the average vampire to the equivalent of a cheap hood. And Spike knew that demons had been canonized.

Bloody universe.

Funny now to remember he hadn't been chipped, hadn't had a soul when he approached Buffy about an alliance to stop Angelus' crusade to end the world. Funny now to realize and admit how deep his respect for Slayers went -- even the ones he had killed.

And so much earlier, how did he explain his own mother's fate?

 _Had he ever been a proper vampire?_

***

Early tourists wandered the streets down in the market. Spike could hear an American voice whine about the lack of a decent latte. All creatures of habit, he thought. Living or otherwise.

Tepid air filled the room, bronze-washed by light that filtered through dusty slatted blinds. If he pulled the cord, would enough sunlight make it through to do the job? His fingers cramped, paralyzed by his inability to act, as paralyzed as the cat whose spine he had crushed the night before then drained to blunt his terrible thirst.

Tame as a budgie he was, taking his bagged, sterile meals for granted. The few live kittens he'd snacked on in Sunnydale had been fluffy and clean, perfumed by pet-shampoo, with kibble on their breath. Last night's alley cat stank of urine, pus and garbage. Dead meat and old blood. It struggled with a desperation and violence that Spike appreciated. He hadn't been prepared for the sense of kinship that came after. The stinking thing, teeth bared in a death grimace, stained and broken in his hands, had fought against its final fate as best it could.

It was his lowest moment since leaving Africa. Tears dripped off his nose as Spike lit a cigarette and kicked trash over the ragged fur.

He'd spent over 100 years blunting the edge of his vampiric sense of smell with tobacco products. While not sharp enough to smell a woman's arousal, a vampire's nose was keener than the average human's. Not so much of a plus when he'd first been turned. Bathing habits and personal hygiene products had improved the air surrounding his food supply in the last 70 or 80 years. Back to those urban legends -- it wasn't just sex that made handsome youngsters preferred entrees. They tended to smell better than their aged counterparts. Some vampires just didn't care. Possessed by the need to feed, off blood, off violence, rank odors didn't even register on reputedly sensitive vampire noses.

Africa had smelled like sun-dried dung and dust. Mexico smelled the same.

The trip away from the Dark Continent was a blur. It was clear to Spike that the human soul was at once an overvalued and poorly-packed bit of psychic baggage. Or maybe an intangible general in charge of intangible troops: memory, hope, desire, self-doubt, guilt, remorse. It was unclear to him why, after over a century of gleeful desertion, the troops should stand at attention and salute with such alacrity.

 _There would always be mysteries._

Spike sat on the board-hard bed, unbreathing, unmoving as the noise-decibels in the streets climbed. Vampires were notoriously bad with story problems. And it wasn't just a patience thing. His claim to fame, his moniker as The Big Bad, hadn't been earned solely by ultraviolence, willingness and ability to kill anything or anyone that got in his face. Powers of observation, pet, he'd bragged to Drusilla. Bigger context. Tongue that could flay the skin off an opponent, exposing the weak underbelly of self-doubt. In his prime the Genghis Khan and Oscar Wilde of vampires.

Now killing Mexican alley cats to feed.

Sun-dried hay and cow dung.

Spike closed his eyes.

***

The carnival-slash-circus had been perpetually noisy, even during the dead's hours of night. Farm girls and boys who smelled of earth and domestic animals had blood like warm milk. It was a good time to be alive in the New Land. A vacation from legendary acts of violence in Europe. _Magister Grimes' Troupe of Terror_ was now widely acknowledged as a historical in-joke perpetrated by the demon community upon humans at a time when geeks, freaks and circuses were the zenith of common entertainment. Drusilla made him join with her, for a time. His Dark Princess became Cleopatra, fortune teller and seer. Grown men often ran screaming from her kiosk, several a night. Scared silly by her _words,_ silly buggers.

Even with a soul that was a good memory.

Spike worked as a barker and harangued the crowd like a twentieth-century stand-up comedian. He taunted, insulted and tempted them into the sideshows and tents.

It was good fun, funneling gullible humans toward audiences with demons that fed off emotion or raw life-force. Magister Grimes' inflexible rules about a trail of dead bodies had, predictably, tempered Spike's fun with restless rebellion. He would have moved on more quickly, but Drusilla's stars wanted her to stay. So stay they did for nearly a year.

There were compensations. The occasional runaway lured into a threesome.

Two-tent nights.

If wine could turn to blood, blood could be as heady as wine. Circus tents and sawdust aisles on one side of a town, sawdust aisles and evangelist's tent on the other. Human skin feverish with self-righteous flagellation, and guilty, hysterical lusts saturated the hot summer air with Lucullan scents. The rise and fall of the preacher's voice exhorting repentance and salvation. The murmur of _amen_ and _yes, lord!_ as the show built to a climax. Spike could see and hear it all with unwanted clarity. He remembered waiting in shadow, smoking, pocket full of gaudy printed circulars. They left the tent like wild turkeys following each other across a field full of camouflaged hunters. Largely oblivious.

 _Free pass, miss._ Prey startled easily, but didn't fly. Take the apple, pet. Delicious, it is. Delicious they were, hot with want and denial. Even with a soul he couldn't remember their faces, just the taste of their wild blood.

Should he regret their deaths? He gave them proof of what they wished to believe, after all. Proof of the existence of evil. Proof of life after death. Proof that their mothers were right all along: strange men are dangerous.

The nadir of common entertainment.

Of all the things he wouldn't choose to remember, those summer nights and damn tent services seemed determined to rise to the top like a bloated corpse in a still pond. The replays had begun as he stumbled back through the veldt. It amazed Spike that somehow he'd retained such a complete memory of those sermons.

"Do you talk to Jesus EVERYDAY?" An aged, infirm Richard Harris would be the perfect Hollywood stand-in for that particular version of Brother Love, Spike thought. The preacher had been an artist, a mesmerist, imbued with the ability to call a darn good imitation of the Holy Ghost -- if not the real thing.

That judgment was beyond Spike.

"First you gotta ask forgiveness for your life of sin. Then you gotta give Him everything in your life." A common theme prior to the traditional freewill offering. "Then you gotta ask Him -- what's the plan for me, Lord? You gotta pray. You gotta pray every day." The coarse, white-washed wall across from the rumpled Mexican bed was screen for Spike's projected memory.

"But there's somethin' about prayer the faithful need to understand." A long bony white finger pointed at the crowd. Spike remembered thinking the old bugger looked like something had already drained him. "Among those who approached Jesus asking to be healed was a man with a withered arm." The preacher held one thin arm half bent, fingers curled into an exaggerated claw. "He pushed his way to the front of the crowd and beseeched the Son . . . to make both his arms the SAME!"

How the crowd roared. It was a right tension-breaker, that bit of evangelical humor. The old preacher's face contorted with simulated horror as he retracted his 'normal' arm and held both limbs before him as if imitating a preying mantis. "You gotta be CAREFUL how you pray!"

Be careful what you ask for. You might get it. Trite.

True.

***

Nothing had been in focus since Africa. Maybe longer. Perhaps the world had lurched askew during those cataclysmic minutes when he first saw her eyes lose focus, her face soften. Into the abyss, over the edge, where only one vampire had gone before . . .

Whoever was running the multimedia show in his brain was a right bastard. Buffy's breasts made a brief appearance, then changed to a hazy, impressionistic view of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Jungle creepers devoured the snowy peak, and the echo of amen began to sound like an elephant's bugle.

What year had he met Henri Rousseau? Spike couldn't remember. Early 1900s, in Paris? Those were memories he would welcome. Nights on the streets of Paris. Until he'd been inside Buffy, Spike hadn't imagined anything could feel as good against his skin as satin soaked with hot French blood.

Africa needed to take a close look at Rousseau's jungles, and do some serious interior redecorating. Where were the vines like snakes, black-green plants with leaves like elephant ears, scampering monkeys with oddly naked faces and too-knowing eyes? Although the dead poet inside him deliberately avoided the artsy-fartsy crowd, Spike remembered the amused pleasure that discovery of Rousseau's paintings brought him. Pleasure and epiphany.

Peek inside a fantasy jungle and know the view is always better from a distant perspective. Look too closely at the real world, think too hard and too much, and that spinning reality/fantasy coin becomes visible . . .and sod-all if a bloke isn't impotently transfixed as he waits to see what face will be up when the coin lands.

Her face. And Spike knew, like he knew when the sun came and went, that fantasy and reality were cohabiting behind those blue eyes, weaving their talons through her bright hair.

The word for the world is jungle, Spike thought. The word for his world was Buffy.

***

In the years after he was turned, Spike heard rumors and gossip about the Clinic. Inhumanity had the occasional medical need, just like other folk. Confirmation of the Clinic's existence came during his time with Magister Grimes. Tricky bit of business, that, making transportation arrangements for a Fyorl demon with ingrown horns.

The faded stucco building, squatting in a filth-encrusted part of town, didn't surprise Spike. His keen nightsight confirmed that many of the seedy loungers he passed in the blocks surrounding the address weren't human. He'd been in other quiet, dusty demon enclaves in third-world cities. Nothing new here. But inside . . .

Clean and quiet. Spike found himself standing in front of a broad, gleaming mahogany reception desk situated in a jungle of potted plants, being assessed by a pretty girl who smelled a bit like leaf mold. Dryad, maybe, Spike thought. She didn't beat around the bush, just asked him to simply state his medical, surgical, or psychiatric business.

"Got a bit o' hardware in my head. Want it out." Simple enough.

She made a note. "What currency will you be paying with?"

"Dollars. American greenbacks. How much?"

"There is no charge for an evaluation. A price will be set afterwards."

He knew what that meant. He'd probably have to scare up more cash.

***

"We can't help you," the old woman said again. She smiled. "I'll bet that hurts."

"Like a bleedin' dagger," Spike muttered. "Sodding technology anyway."

"Not that. Your soul."

Spike snarled. He felt his face morph, his fangs throb into erection. "I'm here to talk about hardware, not software. If it can't be handled, say so straight out."

"It's not just the technology," the Evaluator said. She stroked a crop of gray bristles on her wrinkled chin. "There are predestination issues that might be skewed if we tamper with the thing in your head. As it is, the strings around you look like Siamese-twinned madmen have been playing at cat's cradle."

"Presdestination." A cig fit smoothly between his fingers. Spike jammed it between his lips. "Fuck-all to predestination, destiny and prophesy." He flicked flame from a lighter and pulled the burning vapors deep into his lungs. "Fuck-all to magic. Must be a few scientists rattling around this place. Let me talk to one of 'em."

"It should be a comfort. To know you don't have a choice. Never had a choice. What you were, what you are, what you will be . . . offer no surprises to the Powers That Be. No scientist can help you with what is, essentially, a metaphysical condition. Your problem was never about the hardware."

Spike flicked ash onto the rug and stood up. A warning twinge in his head made him wince. "Thanks for the sermon. Thanks for nothing. I hope something big, bad and gnarly is predestined to give you a rough time in the near future."

"Never part with an ill-wish," the Evaluator said. She shook her finger. "Things could have been worse, vampire. You might have ended up with someone else's soul -- like the other fellow."

"Other fellow?" Spike stopped dead in the doorway. "Angel? Has someone else's soul?"

"Gypsies. Vindictive, but sloppy. They cursed him with a soul . . . but didn't specify it had to be his own. He's been carrying around some dispossessed Rom all these years."

***

It was like a fucking board game that circled endlessly, beginning and ending with the square 'Buffy.'

The clinic had been a bust, but there were other options. He'd gotten the chip in Sunnydale, it made perfect sense to return in search of a solution. It made perfect sense to follow the ribbon of darkness that he was predestined to follow.

"Do you know what you are?"

Spike still didn't know exactly what a vampire was, but he knew the answer to the old woman's question. Had always known.

Cursed. Fucking cursed was what he was.

And -- in a perverted, cockeyed, metaphysically disturbing way -- blessed.

Existence was a right bitch.


End file.
